Resourcefulness in Life & Business

Francis E. Madojemu

RESOURCES & RESOURCEFULNESS

Anthony RobbinsThey are a claim to you missing resources, and they may be accurate.

You may not have the money; you

may not have the Supreme Court; but

that is not the defining factor.

The defining factor is never resources;

it's resourcefulness.

Anthony Robbins

The Secrets of the Rich

The difference between the Rich and the Poor can be summed up as

follows:

“The poor say I cannot afford it and the Rich say How can I afford

it.”

Notice the Perception!

If you don't have the money, but you're

creative and determined enough,

you find the way.

So this is the ultimate resource

Luke 16:1-91 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which

had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted

his goods. 2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of

thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no

longer steward.

Luke 16:1-93 Then the steward said within

himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the

stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. 4 I am resolved what to do,

that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me

into their houses.

Luke 16:1-9

5 So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my

lord? 6 And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down

quickly, and write fifty.

Luke 16:1-97 Then said he to another, And how much owest

thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and

write fourscore. 8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their

generation wiser than the children of light.

For being resourceful!

Why?

You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!

They call the Third World the

lazy man’s purview; the

sluggishly slothful and languorous

prefecture.


In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy,

torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken,

disfavored, and impoverished.


In this demesne, as they call it,

there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and

innovations.

Africa is the trailblazer.


Some still call it “the dark

continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel

is not that of hope, but an

approaching train.


And because countless keep

waiting in the way of the train,

millions die and many more

remain decapitated by the

day.


“It’s amazing how you all sit there and

watch yourselves die,” the man next

to me said.

“Get up and do something about it.”

We can't because we believe we don't

have the resources!

Why don't we?


“Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black

person.

The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless

white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no

matter his status or education.


I can pick up a nincompoop from the

New York streets, clean him up, and take him to

Lusaka and you all be crowding around him

chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a

riffraff.

Tell me why my angry friend.”


Are the Zambian engineers so

imperceptive they cannot invent a

simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those

poor villagers?


Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or

an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass

use?


What is the school there for?

Many have died or are dying of neglect

by you. They are dying of AIDS

because you cannot come up with your

own cure.


You are here calling yourselves graduates,

researchers and scientists and are

fast at articulating your credentials once

asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that

—PhD my foot!”


“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the

attention of nearby passengers.

“You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams

from American manufacturing

factories and sending them to your own

factories.


All those research findings and

dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s

treasure.

Why do you think the Asians are a force to

reckon with?


They stole our ideas and turned them into their own.

Look at Japan, China, India, just

look at them.”

He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and

grinned.


“As long as you are dependent on my plane, I

shall feel superior and you my friend shall

remain inferior, how about that?

The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are

a notch better. You Africans are at the

bottom of the totem pole.”

And that has been our downfall as a people; we are not creative enough.

Mind of Malaka

Mind of MalakaIf I were to pit the

average Ghanaian 3rd grader against a

Georgian 3rd grader and give them a

standardized math test, I have no doubt that the Ghanaian

child’s grade would decimate the American

child’s.

Mind of MalakaHowever if I were to ask

both children to take what that mathematical knowledge and apply it

to a real world scenario, the Ghanaian child is at

a disadvantage.

Creativity is not part of our curriculum

Paul Zane PilzerWhat we're seeing is:

There are no scarce resources. In fact, I

always say, There are no resources.

Think for a moment.

LandLand, the most basic resource in a society, wasn't a resource to a hunter-gatherer or a Native American who would take the food off the land and then move on to new land that had

food on it.

LandThat's why the

American Indians would laugh when

they'd sell the land: because they had

taken the food off the land; it was like

selling your empty wrapper from a food

store!

LandThey thought,

"I've taken the food off it; this

guy wants to buy the land.

I already killed all the buffalo there; I'm going north!"

LandAnd so, land wasn't

a resource until a human mind

learned how to farm it and domesticate

animals.

And that's only 6,000 or 7,000 years old.

So the basic resource, we

think, was an invention of the

human mind. Paul Zane Pilzer

Oil Certainly Wasn't A Resource

It was a waste product, and it polluted the water;

it was horrible.

You avoided the oil.

Oil became a resource only 100 years ago when we

learned how to refine it and burn it.

Other Resources?What we see is that throughout society

there are these resources.

They were whale oil in the 18th century,

coal in the 19th century, oil in the

20th century.

Other Resources?And we always think

we're going to run out and how we ought to control it.

But long before we run out, we abandon it in favor

of a much more productive resource.

By being resourceful

(birds looking for food in cracks despite not filling

feeders)

1st Law of AlchemySo the First Law of

Economic Alchemy is that there are no resources;

they're all inventions of the

human mind because technology defines

what a resource is in the first place.

Technology is what makes Resources

Technology of farming makes land a resource.

Technology of burning oil makes gasoline or cars a

resource.

Rubber was a Resource

Rubber was a very strategic resource

prior to 1945 because we used to

need rubber sap from trees

If you remember in school, they teach

you that.

Rubber was a Resource

They don't teach you that anymore

because we haven't used rubber since

1945.

We use synthetic rubber that

comes from oil.

So technology defines what a resource is and, at any

moment in time, defines how much we have.

This is what I call resource technology: technology that

defines our wealth.

Paul Zane Pilzer

Defined by Technology

We always defined our age--the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age--

by the technology.

But it never changed over our

lifetime.


So you studied this in history, but you didn't go out and practice it,

because the technology was constant over your

life.

You were told, "Go to school, learn a

profession, and do it 'til you die."


And you defined men--in fact, our very names come from smith, baker, miller--come from

our profession.

Get a job; that's your job; do it all your life.


And if you start looking at what you spend money on and what you do, 90% of it didn't exist when you

were born.

And something like 50%, I say, didn't exist 10

years ago, from the VCR to all the luxury products we buy. We're constantly expanding our lifestyles.

The AlchemistsThe alchemists were the people whom the kings

hired to "make gold."

They were firm believers that if there was a true

and just Judeo-Christian God, he wouldn't put us on earth to get the army together, kill the people

next door, and take their gold.

The AlchemistsHe would give us a way to

get wealthy, or gold, which was what they

sought to make, by creating it and working and earning it ourselves without harming those people, because around

300 to 600 A.D. we were beginning to realize that people in the next town are really just like us:

The AlchemistsThey have wives, children,

and families; they're not just another race we're

supposed to kill.

So the alchemists believed firmly that God would give

us a way to make gold.

And they sought to figure how you mix up materials

and make gold.

The AlchemistsDid they make gold?

Not exactly.

But they were really after not gold, but

wealth that gold would give them, and

prosperity and peace; they wouldn't have to

fight people.

The AlchemistsThe alchemists, in trying

to make gold, invented metallurgy, chemistry--

the word "chemist" comes from alchemist--pharmacy, medicine--in effect, all the things of technology, from good health to housing to

unlimited food that we now have today.

The AlchemistsThey were truly

successful.

Had they made gold, the thing

they thought they wanted to It would have just dropped

in value

The AlchemistsSo they created all

this success and wealth and, in fact,

when all the ancient--not ancient--in the years 1600, 1700,

1800s, the chemists and scientists we revere today were

alchemists,

The AlchemistsBut what's so beautiful

to me is the faith the alchemists have.

And when you read their you don't see them as charlatans going to a king and saying, "Give me

money, and I'll make gold."

The AlchemistsYou see them when

you read their original work as firm

believers that God would not put us on

earth in a scarce environment where only I can get rich by

taking from you.

The AlchemistsHe would give me a

way that we both can get wealthy,

which is what our whole modern

society and advancing

technology is all about

Economist vs. Alchemist

An economist, I say, takes things and

moves them around. Takes a pie and

says,"Here's how you slice

it better."

Economist vs. Alchemist

An economic alchemist says,

"Throw away the knife; let's bake a bigger pie [so] that everybody

can have a piece."

Deuteronomy 8:18But thou shalt remember the Lord

thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get

wealth, that he may establish his covenant which

he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

Deuteronomy 8:18

Remember the Lord your God. He is the one who gives you power to be successful, in order to fulfill the covenant he confirmed to your ancestors with an oath. -

Living Bible

Why is resourcefulness so valuable?

Because it is the ability to quickly, and often cleverly, find ways to

overcome difficulties and problems.

History shows resourcefulness has separated ordinary people from those

considered extraordinary

USE WHAT YOU HAVE!

Resourcefulness is the ability to

“recognize what you have, and put it to the

best use possible”.

God has promised to give His people amazing

resources; read some of the promises in Philippians 4:19, Ephesians 1:3, and

James 1:17.

“Do what you can with what you

have, where you are.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Spiritual

Resourcefulness in Life & Business